Darkling_Zeist 'Lady of The Lake' (aka) 'The Possessed is an enigmatic, almost impenetrable quasi-giallo by the excellent, Luigi Bazzoni, the talented, intellectual auteur behind the equally idiosyncratic, almost anti-gialli 'Footsteps On The Moon'(1975). Since ''La Donna Del Lago' was also written by fellow iconoclast, Gulio 'Death Laid an Egg' Questi, one might expect a similarly oblique tone, and in terms of confounding genre conventions, he doesn't disappoint. While some might consider 'Lady of The Lake' to be just another example of overwrought nouvelle vague-esque cinematic doodling; but to dismiss this elegiac work as mere self- indulgence is to miss out of one of Italy's most singular and glacial thrillers.

The_Void The Lady in the Lake is often seen as a precursor to the Giallo style that would reach it's peak in the early seventies; and I can certainly see why. However, I would say that the film is closer to a supernatural mystery film than a Giallo and it also shares a lot in common with the popular American film noir style; stemming from it's picture, execution and subject material. The film is very much of the high quality variety and director Luigi Bazzoni takes time and a lot of care to ensure that the film is haunting and mysterious as possible - which pays dividends as the plot starts to pan out. We focus on Bernard; a writer who goes to spend some time in a dilapidated hotel where he spent some time the previous year. Once he gets there, he begins searching for Tilde; a young maid he fell in love with during his previous visit, but he's surprised by the news that Tilde killed herself. However, it would appear that there is more to the apparent suicide as Bernard is shown a picture suggesting she was pregnant...The film is directed by Luigi Bazzoni, who go on to make one of the best seventies Giallo's with the excellent The Fifth Cord as well as one of the oddest genre films with Footsteps in 1975. There's also a writer's credit for Death Laid an Egg writer-director Giulio Questi, so rather unsurprisingly - The Lady of the Lake is a rather bizarre film! It starts off simple enough and the first half of the movie is pretty easy viewing, but then things start to get a bit stranger in the second half and it becomes easy to loose the plot. It's lucky then that there's more than enough to keep the audience otherwise entertained. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and the black and white picture allows the director to capture a real macabre and moody atmosphere. The town in which the film takes place is a masterpiece within itself - the ghostly local population in particular is memorable. The plot comes back together towards the end and the film does give closure to its central plot line. Overall, The Lady of the Lake will probably not please all viewers; but it's a very well made mystery and anyone that considers themselves a fan of Italian cinema should check it out!

MARIO GAUCI Recently, I had been impressed with Bazzoni's weird offering FOOTPRINTS (1975); so, when I happened upon this even more obscure (and, by all accounts, rarer) earlier title from him, I decided to check it out – and, boy, is it a find for Euro-Cult/Art-house buffs! The film, in fact, can perhaps best be described as an arty semi-giallo; interestingly, it contains several echoes to Bazzoni's later effort: the resort town, the central hotel setting, the strange characters encountered by the hero (in FOOTPRINTS, the bewildered protagonist was a woman), the mystery revolving around a missing person – not to mention the deliberate (and deliberately-paced) oblique narrative.What is immediately arresting here (in spite of the somewhat fuzzy quality of the print on display) is the supreme style allotted to the film's look – which is wintry, bleak and forbidding – by its two directors (incidentally, this was Rossellini's only stint in such capacity!); to this end, they wisely recruited veterans such as cinematographer Leonida Barboni (but who also adopts peculiar framing throughout, none more so that the pan in extreme close-up of a character's face with the gleaming lake for backdrop!) and production designer Luigi Scaccianoce. However, equally important to the fabric of the piece are the contributions of Renzo Rossellini (supplying an appropriately moody score) and editor Nino Baragli (whose frequent jump-cuts and seamless juxtaposition between reality, recollection and outright fantasy create a genuine and admirably disorientating effect on the viewer). Incidentally, THE POSSESSED – a misleading English title but a literal translation of the original, THE LADY OF THE LAKE, would be no less ambiguous! – was co-written (with Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini) by Giulio Questi; for the record, as a director in his own right, the latter went on to make such idiosyncratic yet haunting revisions of genre convention as the Spaghetti Western DJANGO, KILL…IF YOU LIVE, SHOOT! (1967) and the giallo DEATH LAID AN EGG (1968).The cast is compact but exceptionally noteworthy: Peter Baldwin (very good in Dino Risi's LOVE IN ROME [1960] – here, in what I assume to be his most significant role, he's downright excellent!), Salvo Randone (as the owner of the hotel whom the hero suspects of both lechery and murder, he manages to alternate between a genial and sinister countenance throughout), Valentina Cortese (a typically fine performance, though her weather-beaten looks make it hard to convince us she's Randone's daughter…even if a reasonable age gap separates the two actors!), Philippe Leroy (having appeared in so many films from the 1960s and 1970s that I've watched in recent years and, thanks also to his remarkable versatility, the French actor has become a firm favorite of mine!), Virna Lisi (while undeniably sensual, her contribution basically amounts to an extended cameo – since her character, who seems to have turned the heads of virtually the entire male cast at some point, is already dead when the film opens and we only see the girl in flashback/fantasy sequences!) and Pia Lindstrom (a rare cinematic appearance by Ingrid Bergman's elder daughter – being similarly steeped in mystery, alas, she too is barely given time to create a flesh-and-blood character…but, then, her resultant fragile performance emerges to be all the more moving for it!).The plot concerns an author (Baldwin) arriving off-season at a resort town he habitually retired to in order to work, hoping to meet again a servant-girl (Lisi) he's enamored of employed at the hotel run by Randone; however, he's told she's no longer there…but notices that her cloak is still hanging in the closet, follows a woman in the streets he sees wearing it (and is eventually disappointed to learn the outfit now belongs to Lisi's replacement). Typically, he decides to delve deeper into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the former maid's demise – still, Randone and his family (Cortese assists in the managing of the establishment while brother Leroy owns a butcher shop situated in the courtyard of the hotel itself and, coincidentally, has just returned from his honeymoon with wealthy but naïve and sickly bride Lindstrom) generally evade his probing. Even the only man who's willing to help at first – a hunchbacked local photographer (I'm not sure about the actor's name but his face is awfully familiar!), who presents Baldwin with a photo in which Lisi is visibly pregnant – suddenly opts out and leaves town in a hurry!; then, there's Lisi's alcoholic bum of a father who seems to have nothing of value for the hero to work on – venting the anger and frustration over his daughter's loss by bursting into vitriolic (but ineffectual) nightly rants outside the hotel windows! At one point, Lindstrom makes a weak attempt to communicate with Baldwin but, before they can meet (he had previously noticed the girl walking aimlessly by the lake at night a number of times, but never quite mustered the nerve to confront her), she too is found dead! Eventually, the hero starts to think he may have gotten it all wrong: perhaps Lisi wasn't so much a victim of circumstance (periodically abused by both father and son!) as a femme fatale who got killed simply because she was too greedy.The final revelation then, takes things in another direction altogether; while certainly effectively handled, the scene does perhaps constitute a slight let-down – as it won't surprise anyone familiar with Mario Bava's THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1963), actually the film credited with originating the giallo tradition, in which Cortese also features

c532c I saw this on late-night local TV in the early 70s, tolerably dubbed, under the title LOVE, HATE AND DISHONOR, and was immediately taken by it's eerie, VAMPYRE-like style.It never played on TV again, and in the late 70s to 90s I searched for it in vain. I did catch a reference to it under the title Possessed in the Encyclpedia of Horror Movies.Finally found a poor quality English-subtitled VHS a few years back from VideoSearch of Miami and enjoyed it once again. I guess I have to add two more lines of text to meet the minimum requirement to post. I hope this is enough